News

News: Anonymous Individual Claiming to be WWE Employee Wants Florida Government to Close WWE TV Tapings

By John Canton • Published 21st April 2020
TJR Wrestling

This is one of those stories that can lead to a lot of questions, but before we get to that part of it, I want to present the info. There have been a lot of stories over the last month about WWE’s taping schedule at the WWE Performance Center in Orlando. They have done some live tapings, they have taped things in advance, there were rumors of them being shut down, then they found a way to keep going after the Governor of Florida deemed WWE and other sports as “essential business” in the state. As we reported late last week, WWE has plans to tape shows all the way into early July.

It was reported today by Jon Alba of Spectrum Sports 360 in Orlando that there was a meeting with Tuesday’s Orange County Board of County Commissioners (in the Orlando area) where a WWE employee using the name “John” (does not have to be a real name) filed a public comment. It was more of a complaint where “John” claimed that he was being forced to work WWE’s TV tapings even though there were “Stay at Home” orders in Florida. The “John” individual said that he was afraid to speak out because he knows he would be fired if he approached his higher-ups (bosses).

The comment from “John” went on to say that even though there were precautions in place from WWE to try to keep things clean at the WWE PC, it’s difficult to maintain social distancing practices at WWE tapings. There was a request made by “John” to shut down the WWE tapings immediately so that WWE employees and wrestlers can go home to practice social distancing rules.

You can listen to the Orange County Board member reading this anonymous message in the clip below.

Let me make it clear that this could be a fake comment by somebody that is bored at home with nothing to do and they want to laugh about something like this. There’s no real way of proving it’s a legit thing because it’s an anonymous person. Their reason for remaining anonymous does make sense because it’s understandable that somebody would be worried about losing their job when the world is going through a health crisis. Plus, we know WWE fired a bunch of wrestlers and a lot of office staff last week as well.

In response to these anonymous comments, Wrestlevotes shared this info.

That makes sense from WWE’s perspective too. I still think somebody that works for WWE might be reluctant to approach the bosses to say they feel uncomfortable working there during the ongoing health crisis.

WWE issued a statement about this story this afternoon:

“These accusations aren’t true. Employees know they can confidentially go to Human Resources, not the public. Notwithstanding the appropriate protocol, no one would be fired if they were uncomfortable with their surroundings. We’ve made accommodations for individuals upon request.”

Just because WWE issued that kind of statement does not mean whoever made these initial claims is lying. It’s just a case of WWE wanting to make a statement about it.

TJR Thoughts: It’s up to you, the reader, to decide if you want to believe this anonymous tipster or if you think it’s just somebody having fun. I can see it going either way quite frankly and it’s probably going to be difficult to prove if it was a legit person that did this.